I choose happy

I have spent much of my life in a battle with depression, not severe depression just enough for life to be hard at times for the lows to feel extra low and the highs to feel like flying , it made things that were small seem big and things big seem overbearing.  It was until Clay that I realized that it didn’t have to be that way, that I wasn’t as crazy as I had been told so many times before, that my anxiety about grocery shopping or really anything that involved more than a comfortable environment wasn’t normal.  I felt like it was a crazy and the kind I had to hide, I was embarrassed of how it made me feel, I would wait until impossible hours to go to Walmart because if it was crowded I felt like I could hardly breathe, if we went to dinner I needed to have a drink first, I used cigarettes to calm down(although I am sure that was all in my head and later I realized it made me stop and breath – which was actually what helped not the cigs themselves)and I quickly realized I could not live that way, watering down my emotions to function, now in this stage of life I am a manager of chaos and I can not function with those kind of limits,  I started anxiety meds and an anti depressant in my early 20’s, I had to learn to settle the panic and so many times I have let people talk me off my meds, that it was in my head that I didn’t need it I seemed fine to them but the thing is I am sure I did seem fine, there were some that just thought I was a little crazy that was normal….your a woman you are gonna be crazy …NO that is not the truth.  I say all that to say this …being happy is a choice for me, a choice I make everyday for my for my husband, and for my kids, for people around me and most importantly for myself.   I don’t want anyone else to feel the way I did, feeling unstable isn’t fun, it was the worst thing about pregnancy for me, I had to lay down my medicine for 9 months and sometimes it was debilitating, I can remember at the end of Porters pregnancy, I was hardly sleeping, I felt like I was losing it, I walked the porch trying to convince myself that the small things in the day did not have to dictate my day, when she asked if it was ok to induce me I cried….I had never been so transparent with someone as I had her, I said yes please please, I need my medicine back.  I need it to be a good mom, I need it to balance me it doesn’t make me happy but it puts me in a position to see things for what they are and stay out of the extremes, to make sound judgement,  and to live in the moment with my family and I praise God that it has changed my life.  I had a friend tell me she just decided she didn’t need it anymore, and stopped refilling it, and a month later had to revisit because she had no desire to function normally, I did it once besides my pregnancies, I decided I didn’t need it -also not a good time in my life to make that decision- and threw it away…..a few weeks later I worked myself in to such a tizzy when I finally called A she thought I was drunk ( I was dead sober) and she sent BF#2 to check on me where he found me on the floor of our dining room so upset I had made myself sick, I will never do it again,  I am not going to decide in a few years I can go with out it because I have an imbalance and time does not fix that, my husband is not going to one day not need his insulin and decide to put it down, I will probably never outgrow this (I am far from the growing stage but you know what I mean)or anything of that matter,  I think if more people understood that, anti depressants wouldn’t be such a shady subject, that needing extra serotonin isn’t the result of terrible circumstances I am in or anything in my control- it isn’t my choice but being happy is…

It’s a choice and I choose it everyday